


Take the Fifth

by ramblingfangirl



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Cybertronian Civil War, Gen, Genocide, Lore - Freeform, Post, Quintessons - Freeform, Unreliable Narrator, transformers the last knight - Freeform, who is biased
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramblingfangirl/pseuds/ramblingfangirl
Summary: After all that she's done for it, Quintessa will not allow Cybetron to be destroyed.Nor will she ever allow the great devourer to rise once more.Even if the only way she sees that can ensure both of these things, requires the deaths of over 7 billion people.





	Take the Fifth

**Author's Note:**

> Had to do a lot of reading up on scraps of lore to get this, but it's done now!
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading!

  
She made them.

She made them and was one of the first to be made.

The fifth.

Only a few like her even existed at the start. Those created by Primus himself, those who existed for a purpose: to ward off a great evil.

His brother. His opposite. The great devourer.

_Unicron._

And they fulfilled that role.

One long, long battle filled with so much destruction left him decrepit.  
  
Not dead, not yet.

But defeated, left derelict and banished away for now.

It was then that she had time to think, as the rest of her siblings turned to their own ambitions.

During this battle against chaos himself, she'd witnessed so many civilisations as he'd been pushed back from one planet to the next.

People, not built for any purpose, but simply living their lives. Building their own civilisations and striving for greatness as one whole community.

So many wondrous civilisations like that.

So full of growing, thriving life.

_And she wanted it._

She had nothing against any of her fellow Primes, not yet, not then, but they were so _few_.

Why did they have to be so few? They were powerful, they had a habitable planet in Cybertron that could house billions and yet they numbered only just over a dozen.

That could not stand. She would not let that stand.

Cybertronians would have their civilisation too.

She would not just be a Prime.

She would be the Prime of Life.

She would see her dream through.

First, it came time to practice. She would not let her own people be the test run.

A few words whispered in ears, Primes and aliens alike convinced that their own goals would be furthered by her own...just a few lies told.

Here and there.

It would be worth it in the end. When it was done.

They would thank her.

That's what she told herself as the first part of her plan came to fruition.

As she breathed life into a new race. Albeit one that was organic, not mechanical like her.

They named themselves and the planet they resided after her.

Her subjects.

It was then that her trouble started. Had she known then, been older then, wiser then, she might have been more careful.

But back then...well, back then she was Quintus Prime and everything was going perfectly in her mind. Why should she make any changes to her plan?

So she set about her task.

Leading Liege Maximo onto her side had been easy enough. Wouldn't like subjects to rule over, after all? Cybertronians were glorious, should they not take more steps to spread that glory? Wouldn't it be fun?

All he had to do, was to spread some half-truths here and forget to mention a few facts there, and it would be easy.

All he had to do, was exactly what he already did.

Alchemist and Solus were harder.

They did not have such lusts for power, anxious to be exploited.

But they did have one thing that could be used, in that they were far more like her than of their other siblings.

They loved to create too.

Craft magnificent inventions that would not be found anywhere else across the stars.

Would creating life not be another magnificent and yet also wholly benevolent challenge?

That appeal there, was what got her the Emberstone crafted.

An artefact that could breathe life into metal.

An artefact that, at some point, came to later be called the Allspark.

They questioned what she would do with it. Solus being especially insistent and Quintus knew that Alchemist would have been too, had he not spent so much time partying, overcharged, with aliens.

They knew that harvesting enough resources required to do what they wished could not be done to Cybertron, not without rendering it too barren to support the new life they aimed to create.

She told them not to worry. She had a solution and would sort the problem.

They called her too idealistic as she turned in private to her first creations.

They had been made by her and would obey her in this.

Would they not like mechanical subjects too, after all? Servants to help with tasks too dangerous for any organic to have to do.

Should they help her they will share in her power and rule alongside the Primes as was their right.

The deception was necessary.

While she may have created them, they were unruly.

They knew that as her progeny she had a soft spot for them, would not just wipe them out should they prove troublesome, and repeatedly they had tried to exploit that.

Should she let down her guard for even a moment they would gain the upper hand.

But again, she was a Prime and back then the idea of anyone gaining the upper-hand over her was preposterous.

So she had them set their best scientist into building the Seeds, away from the prying eyes of her people to help make her people. Then she sent of their best explorers to put them to use.

Not just any metal would do. She had a very specific ideal for how things should turn out.

Once her subjects had fulfilled their role and brought the desired metals to it, it was then a matter of making something of it.

A fraught process and also the specific point where they started unjustly turning against her.

_Where did you get that metal Quintus?_

That was none of any of their businesses. She didn't see any of them offering to help in retrieving it, so they had no right to ask of her now.

And besides, she hardly knew herself. Her subjects had been free to collect from wherever they saw fit. She didn't know the specifics and was as such hardly fit to answer whether any planets chosen were populated.

She was sure if there were, they'd recover eventually.

Life possessed a remarkable capacity to do just that.

But most of the Primes just weren't happy with that answer.

They still made use of the metal of course, worked away it and the Emberstone combined brought forth the first denizens of their new civilisation.

But they grumbled about it the whole time.

_If we find evidence of something Quintus, you will suffer the consequences!_

Hardly.

Liege stood to her defence. As did Megatronus.

Even Onyx took pity and advised against anything overtly harsh.

The rest knew they could not start something with her without causing a conflict.

A conflict they would not then risk having, for the results would surely be catastrophic.

And as far as they knew, this was then of it anyway.

They had their people, now it was time to govern.

Even then though, she would not risk being caught prepared, lest they change their minds.

She recruited her knights and in secret she also had her staff forged.

Knights to defend her, one for each prime, and the staff to stop everything she had built, everything that she had worked for and that she now deserved being ripped away.

_Until it all was anyway._

Something she could scream and scream and scream about until that screaming caused her vocorder to shred.

If she just let herself, as would be so bitterly tempting were she _weak_.

It wasn't _her_ fault, what she had banished for. It wasn't fair!

They may perhaps have been her subjects but she had not ordered the Quintessons to invade. She had not known they even planned to, or the devices they'd developed to turn her people into the drones she had once promised them.

They had been far, far cleverer than she had given them credit for.

She made them pay nonetheless. Used her staff and ripped away the world that she had once given them, using it to instead fuel and damage the wreckage that the Quintesson onslaught has wrought upon hers.

Quintessa for Cybertron.

And that, _that_ act, had been the final straw.

It had been genocide, yes, there had been huge and indiscriminate casualties, yes, but the species were not all dead.

It had been but a warning.

A warning for the greater good.

A warning on exactly what would happen to those who tried to invade.

A warning against those who challenged a Prime's might.

A warning that she would issue as many times as it took until all enemies either _learned_ or _died._

For that, her own knights turned against her, taking her staff from her and running.

For that, before she'd been able to take any action against that treacherous waste of metal, her own family turned traitor on her for her alleged deceptions.

_Her!_

Banished _her!_

She refused to go down without a fight, but it was a fight that, in the end, she lost.

Was forced to leave the people and the home she loved so dearly for the crime of protecting it.

And later, when it was far, far too late she would find out the worse news she possibly could have.

Of how, in her absence...it fell.

First went down the Dynasty of Primes.

Betrayed much like she had been.

Those who had remained on Cybertron wiped out. Leaving only smatterings of offspring behind to carry forth their legacy.

A legacy which most of those smatterings did not even know what truly entailed.

And then...then it was the war.

The war which started and ended just about every other aspect of Cybertron that had survived the Dynasty's collapse.

From the civilisation to the very planet itself.

With it's last remnants still being thrown away over an over.

Thrown away, she would later find out, for _Unicron._

She had finally found the location of the beast only to learn that Optimus Prime, progeny of Prima himself, was siding with saving _him_ over _Cybertron._

And so, for the first time in so many millennia after her banishment, she came home.

She came home, no longer baring the title Quintus Prime, but that of the planet which took it's name from it, before she left that place all but destroyed.

Baring it as a mark of both pride and a sign of what she was willing to do again.

She came home and she _waited_ and she _acted._

It seemed that while the _Autobots_ were determined with their disgustingly single-minded pursuit to sacrifice all for evil incarnate, the Decepticons were much more agreeable to her goals.

They would help her stop _him_ from ever getting the chance to wake up.

Then came the fabled Prime, and once he was under her control, back in line, it was just a matter of being able to retrieve her staff.

Then she could fix everything.

But the Autobots still refused to understand.

Refused in their stubbornness to sacrifice one planet, one, for the sake of not only their home, but so many others!

Should Unicron get the chance to fully wake up, should this "Earth" not be destroyed, then entire star systems would die before they even have the chance to realise what was happening.

Chances are, that they would not be able to stop him again.

He would kill _everything_!

And while she herself was not a stranger to genocide, when she did it, it was for a purpose.

Unicron did it simply to sate his own hunger.

How could the Autobots, _knowing_ all that, still think it was her that needed to be stopped? Try slay her and not the beast?

Had she not teleported, she would have been dead and the rise of the great devourer rendered inevitable.

She was on his surface now, masked with the appearance of a human woman.

Alive and once again waiting.

If there was one thing her banishment had improved about her it was her patience.

He might know she was there now, might vaguely recognise her in his state of mostly-slumber, but for now he was still powerless to do anything about that.

She had time.

She would still have her way.

She knew how to kill him, after all.

The Autobots would not stop her.

And when they inevitably tried to, she would reek a great and terrible revenge upon them for what they have _done_.

For she would not allow Unicron or anyone who took his side to outlast the civilisation she'd fought to have even _created._

For she would not allow Unicron or anyone who took his side to outlast _Cybertron._

For she would not allow Unicron or anyone who took his side to outlast _her._

 


End file.
